Shadow Prey

sitting in the sunshine and had a pocket full of peppermint toothpicks.
    “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Lucas said.
     
    Elwood Stone set up a hundred feet from the halfway house. It was a good spot; the inmates could get their cocaine on the way home. Some of them, the inmates, were running on tight schedules: they were clocked out of their jobs and allowed a set amount of time to get home. They didn’t have the leisure to run all over the place, looking for toot.
    Lucas spotted Stone at the same time Stone spotted Lucas’ Porsche. The dealer started running south down the street, but it was all two- and three-story apartments and townhouses with no spaces between them to run into. Lucas cruised alongside until Stone gave up, breathing hard, and sat on the stoop of one of the apartments. As he sat down, it occurred to Stone that he should have tossed the tube of crack into the weeds. Now it was too late.
    “Stone, how are you?” Lucas said amiably, as he walked around the nose of the 911. “Sounds like you’re a little out of shape.”
    “Fuck you, Davenport. I want a lawyer.” Stone knew him well.
    Lucas sat on the stoop beside the dealer and leaned back, tilted his head up to the sun, taking in the rays. “You ran the four-forty in high school, didn’t you?”
    “Fuck you, Davenport.”
    “I remember that track meet against Sibley, they had that white boy, what’s his name? Turner? Now that boy could motor. Christ, you don’t see that many white boys . . .”
    “Fuck you, I want a lawyer.”
    “So Turner’s old man is rich, right?” Lucas said conversationally. “And he gives the kid a Corvette. Turner takes it up north and piles it into a bridge abutment, you know? They had to stick him together with strapping tape to have a funeral.”
    “Fuck you, I got a right to an attorney.” Stone was beginning to sweat. Davenport was a stone killer.
    Lucas shook his head with a stage sigh. “I don’t know, Elwood. Can I call you Elwood?”
    “Fuck you . . . .”
    “Sometimes life ain’t fair. You know where I’m coming from? Like the Turner kid. And take your case, Elwood. They’ve got all bureaucrats on the sentencing commission. You know what they did? They cranked up the guidelines on possession with intent. Guess what the guidelines are for a three-time loser going down on possession with intent?”
    “I ain’t no fucking lawyer . . . .”
    “Six years, my friend. Minimum. Cute guy like you, your asshole will look like the I-94 tunnel when you come out. Shit, if this had been two months ago, you’d of got off with two years.”
    “Fuck you, man, I want an attorney.”
    Lucas leaned close to him and bared his teeth. “And I need a few rocks. Now. You lay a few rocks on me, now, and I walk away.”
    Stone looked at him in wild surmise. “You? Need rock?”
    “Yeah. I need to squeeze a guy.”
    The light in Stone’s eyes went out. Blackmail. That made sense. Davenport actually smoking the stuff, that didn’t make sense. “I walk?”
    “You walk.”
    Stone thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded,stood up and fished in his shirt pocket. He pulled out a glass tube stoppered with black plastic. There were five chunks of crack stacked inside.
    “How much you need?” he asked.
    “All of it,” Lucas said. He took the tube away from Stone. “And stay the fuck away from that halfway house. If I catch you here again, I’ll bust your ass.”
     
    The medical examiner’s assistants were hauling Benton’s body out of the Indian Center when Lucas got back. A TV cameraman walked backward in front of the gurney as it rolled down the sidewalk carrying the sheet-shrouded body, then did a neat two-step-and-swivel to pan across the faces of a small crowd of onlookers. Lucas walked around the crowd and down the line of squad cars. Yellow Hand was waiting impatiently. Lucas got the patrolman to open the back door and climbed in beside the kid.
    “Why don’t you hike over to that 7-Eleven and get yourself a doughnut,” Lucas suggested to the cop.
    “Nah. Too many calories,” the cop said. He settled back in the front seat.
    “Look, take a fuckin’ hike, will you?” Lucas asked in exasperation.
    “Oh. Sure. Yeah. I’ll go get a doughnut,” the uniform said, finally picking up the hint. There were rumors about Davenport . . . .
    Lucas watched the cop walk away and then turned to Yellow Hand.
    “Who was this guy?”
    “Aw, Davenport, I don’t know this